G.A.B.B.

Every year the fam checks out the Boston Mills ArtFest. The ArtFest is one of those Akron cultural treasures not everyone knows about but everyone should. For two weekends each summer, the ski resort at Boston Mills opens up a juried art show featuring artists from all over -- mostly the United States, but they generally pick up a couple of Europeans and South Americans who do the American art show scene. Go to out-of-state shows and mentioned being from Akron and you learn that Boston Mills is a big deal -- everyone has heard of it.

If you haven't heard of the art show scene, it's quite the subculture. If you hang out long enough, you hear artists renew acquaintences or talk about what shows they are going to next. A number of artists don't sell in galleries or a studio space. Instead, they spend the winter building up inventory, then take to the road all summer.

This year we went and learned of a bona fide disaster which so far the press hasn't really picked up on. Thursday night's storms triggered a flood through the North Tent of the show. The photos showed waist-deep water running off the ski slopes and rushing through the tents on the way to the river. When we were there Saturday, the North Tent remained gutted.






Though other tents are still full of artists.

From talking to some of the artists, everyone lost inventory, and some -- estimates running at 6-8 -- lost everything. One of the potters on our short list this year was gone by Saturday.

I guess the damage in Stark County and elsewhere in the state was sufficiently compelling that this story didn't cross the media radar screen. At first blush, it seems somewhat effemeral. But imagine if a flood had wiped out 6-8 small businesses for a year. These artists are in fact small business people and lost their entire year's business.

Meanwhile, we wonder about the hit the show itself took. While the show doesn't open to the general public until Friday, Thursday is Preview Night -- the rich folks pony up for wine tasting and first dibs on the really pricy stuff. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Indeed, the show didn't open until Saturday.

Not all the news was bad. We bought an amazing blown glass piece. This is "Arches" (center), getting friendly with the new neighbors in our pottery collection. Yes, that's really glass.



The ArtFest runs two weekends -- the second go-round is this weekend with a new slate of artists. Its worth checking out, and worth supporting an Akron institution that is hurting right now.

What more do you need on a summer evening?

Bloggapalooza

Preview: Meet the Bloggers birthday celebration, both PBD house bands are playing, fried comfort foods, George's iPod.

I know many Akron based bloggers have participated in MTB interviews over the past year, and I hope many more read transcripts or listened to the podcasts. It's a fantastic operation allows you, the blogger, to help create dialogue and commentary about our communities with civic leaders.

Think about coming up for this event and making the Akron delegation look so darn big and strong.

(A similiar version of this entry will be posted on PBD later today.)

As TBMD crew heads out to Corolla, NC. Cross posted on TBMD, since if’in yur gonna gloat, might as well go whole hog.

I've got a fawn in the backyard. 2nd year in a row.

I didn’t make it to yesterday’s Akron Roundtable speech on the future of the newspaper business. Laura Rich Fine – Media Analyst for Merrill Lynch spoke about how media markets are changing and how that affects the future of the news gathering industry. Happily the BJ story includes a link to the podcast page on the Roundtable website which I listened to this morning.

The BJ write up is fine, though it kind of feels like the individual points that made a coherent whole in the speech have been excised and laid out on the table, leaving a deconstruction less illuminating than the original. If you have time, I recommend giving the pod a listen.

Some points I really liked didn’t make it into the BJ piece. Among them:

• That the best assets papers have are reporters and editors. This is the antecedent to the point reported in the story that papers can’t cut costs by cutting staff.

• Along with the point that “Local content and the ability to deliver professionally edited stories will keep newspapers alive,” she notes that local papers need to let go of world and national coverage – the internet and cable guarantees that people will get that news elsewhere.

• That it’s best for newspaper companies to be privately held. She went through the steps Knight-Ridder should have taken to remain independent – including buying back its stock.

• That people under 30 expect their information to be free and that is not going to change.

• That new media offers challenges and opportunities for the newspaper business, including:
  • The possible end of print
    
• incorporating citizen journalists into online papers (though it’s interesting she did not talk about bloggers.

The next speech is June 18 with John Ong, former head of Goodrich. I'll try to make it there. In the meantime, a past speech by Rob Curly, Director of New Media at the Naples Daily News looks intriguing.

I went hunting again for Akron blogs -- but didn't find any. I did discover that Jamie, a recent acquaintence at my church, runs a blog, and through his comments field discovered Cee Jay, also from my church. I've added both of them.

I also added two blogging spouses of women already on the roll. Frank (whose name isn't Frank) is husband to marybad and Jake of The Launch is husband to Delilah from The Miller Way.

Finally, Kyle reminded me that his friend/rival Ben Keeler of the Keeler Political Report blogs from Akron, so he's on as well.

As always, if you know anyone else, blahblahblah.